NEW YORK — Immaculate Conception Province, based here, announced this month it will withdraw services from six parishes over a year’s time.
The Aug. 14 issue of News of the Immaculate Conception Province newsletter reported that the province’s provincial minister, Fr. Robert Campagna, OFM, has informed the respective bishops and pastors of three Connecticut parishes — St. Rose of Lima in Meriden, St. Francis of Assisi in New Britain and St. Emery in Fairfield — that the province will withdraw services, effective Jan. 1, 2011.
Holy Name’s Emeric Szlezak, OFM, who now resides at St. Anthony Friary in St. Petersburg, Fla., served as parochial vicar of St. Emery, which serves an ethnic Hungarian community.
Immaculate Conception will withdraw from three additional parishes “when the pastor can no longer continue in ministry there or the bishop decides he wants to make a change,” according to the newsletter.
Those parishes are: St. Pamphilus in Pittsburgh, Pa., St. Francis of Assisi in Cambridge, Mass., and St. Ladislaus in New Brunswick, N.J.
The newsletter also reported that Fr. Robert is “in discussions with Archbishop Timothy Dolan in New York City and Archbishop Thomas Collins in Toronto about our presence in those dioceses.”
Three IC friars will be making their solemn profession of vows on Sept. 13 in Caledon, Ontario, Canada, according to the e-newsletter, edited by Fr. Thomas Washburn, OFM, who is executive secretary of the English-speaking Conference.